Destiny 2’s Iron Banner highlights the glaring problem with Glimmer

destiny 2 glimmer iron banner

For a game that’s undergone as many iterative changes as Destiny 2, balancing its resource economy was never going to be easy, but it’s arguably in worse shape now than ever.

Along with The Final Shape‘s release in June 2024, Bungie deprecated Legendary Shards. Obtained from dismantling weapons and completing activities, the purple shards were used by Guardians alongside Glimmer to make the majority of their in-game purchases.

Removed primarily as a result of Bungie wanting to remove roadblocks for new players – veterans had amassed tens of thousands of Legendary Shards before being sunset – Glimmer remains the sole measure of wealth in Destiny 2.

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In theory, it was a good move. Remove clutter and consolidate bloat into a single currency. In practice, however, Guardians have been left dealing with artificial inflation. Glimmer prices for Engrams and other amenities have skyrocketed, with no bump in accrual rates to compensate.

The result is a bottleneck that becomes even more prevalent when limited-time events come knocking.

Not even a Glimmer

Iron Banner returned to Destiny 2 on November 26. Lord Saladin had his usual wares on sale in addition to some new stock, requiring a single Iron Engram and 25,000 Glimmer for a single weapon.

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No option to craft and desirable weapon rolls being entirely RNG-based is part and parcel of Destiny 2’s gameplay loop. However, the Engram to Glimmer ratio, especially for limited-time events, is sorely out of alignment.

In just a few hours of playing Iron Banner, I found myself with 12 Iron Banner Engrams. That’s 300k Glimmer, over half of the total cap of 500k.

Even using the best methods available in-game right now, obtaining more of the latter to decode more Engrams would eliminate any free time to play Saladin’s limited-time event. The deficit is nonsensical at best and deliberately restrictive at worst.

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destiny 2 iron bannerIron Banner Engrams require a huge amount of Glimmer.

The community at large has voiced similar frustrations on numerous occasions. Lamenting the lack of any automatic Glimmer pick-up – other missed items in the overworld are sent directly to the Postmaster – to ease the pain of farming the little glowing cubes.

“Bungie, if you’re going to gouge me on Glimmer for focusing engrams, the least you could do is send all dropped glimmer to my mailbox like candy from Festival of the Lost,” wrote the author of one Reddit thread.

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“I actually feel like they should increase the amount of Glimmer that you receive in all activities or decrease the cost of focusing,” came one response, adding “I kept having to go farm Public Events for Glimmer because it seems like nothing else pays much,” they continued.

Others were on hand to offer get-rich-quick schemes such as Episode Echoes’ Breach Executable, claiming that it paid out 150k Glimmer per run. Great for normal play, but hardly favourable when Bungie wants players to chase god rolls of weapons with limited windows of availability.

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Raising Glimmer rates would remedy this somewhat, but with the current cap on how much players can hold, Bungie needs to deliver a double whammy and raise the latter simultaneously so Guardians can build up a reserve for occasions such as these.

Fortunately, Bungie is incredibly receptive to player feedback. That’s not a guarantee that it’ll budge on this issue, but the collective community’s voice growing loud enough may just be enough to attract a review.

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